It’s Women’s History Month, and all month long, we’ve been spotlighting incredible women in Tech on our Twitter and Linkedin page. Today, we’re bringing you an extended highlight of one of the most impressive women in tech today – Anneleen Demasure, CEO of Belgium-based digital experience agency Dropsolid.

Read on to hear Anneleen’s thoughts on being a woman in technology and her advice for other women who want to enter the field!

Drupal Association: What's it like to be a woman in technology?
Anneleen Demasure: Good question, as I do not think it is about woman versus man or about technological versus creative industries. For me, it is all about balance between male and female energy. The world these days is so complex that it needs both male and female energy.
I am most enjoying my time as a woman in technology when all different energies can flow in respect of each other. When my own male and female energy is in balance and stress is under control, I feel I can support the team and the company best, and that makes me happy.
I am lucky to work in a technological company, Dropsolid, where there is openness, transparency and both female and male energy on all levels which makes it much easier to address unbalances.

DA: What keeps you motivated in your career in technology?
AD: An important starting point for me is the psychological safety to be yourself at any time. Everyone has talents and personal strengths, but all strengths also have downsides to them. Feeling appreciated with your ups and your downs is crucial to flourish.
Next to that, the autonomy and freedom to be allowed to change things, the connection with colleagues, and making progress together keeps me motivated.
Often in technology, you're building something big together: when a team succeeds in doing that, it surely gives a boost.

DA: What's your favorite aspect of working in tech and/or Drupal?
AD: I guess what is precious to me is the feeling of jointly creating and developing something new which makes a customer happy (because it is of important value to them).
The co-creation, the joy of working together, and the impact are my favourite aspects of working in tech.
Too often, we see technology as wireframes or code or design where, in the end, they are (vital) solutions for people to be helped, to be heard, to find their way, to be unburdened...
All good technology should have this bigger purpose: a housing platform helps people to find a new home, a hospital platform helps people to find the right medical services, a tourism platform inspires you for your next holiday... So it is not about the perfect code or design but about what it brings to people in their daily life. At Dropsolid, Drupal is the means to accomplish this. And the fact that it's open without lock-in, makes it even better.

DA: What advice do you have for aspiring women business leaders?
AD: Whatever situation or crisis you're in, never lose your female energy as one of your drivers. We are dominantly trained and learned to take action and talk, but it often helps to step back and listen to yourself and to others. Finally, always trust your inner voice - it will not betray you.

We cannot thank Anneleen enough for chatting with us and giving such fantastic advice! For more from Anneleen, check out her recent blog post on Dropsolid.com, ‘A plea for wider inclusion and more feminine energy’.

Contributing code back to the community is essential to Open Source software. Without this mindset, we wouldn't have a variety of Linux distributions, Content Management Systems like WordPress or Drupal, and many other tools and services. Finding a balance between paid work and personal time for your initiatives and pet projects is challenging, but it converts into valuable things used by thousands of people in the future. That's why, at Lemberg Solutions, we support Open Source initiatives and motivate our developers to contribute code whenever possible

READ MORE

How to encourage positive online communication in your open source community ultimike Thu, 03/23/2023 - 03:00

The Drupal community uses nudges to keep conversations productive and inclusive.

Threaded online conversations are a relatively new form of communication that can improve knowledge transfer and availability, but they can also stray from the original intent…

rcheesley AmyJune

There has been quite a bit of talk about what it takes to upgrade to 'modern Drupal,' but less ink has been spilled painting a picture of what it will actually be like to still be responsible for a Drupal 7 site after that date.

Introduction

Drupal 7, launched over a decade ago, is reportedly used by 52.2% of all websites using Drupal. But irrespective of this substantial user base, Drupal 7 will reach its End Of Life (EOL) on 28 November 2023, which means it will no longer get security updates or bug fixes.

Team TheDropTimes bid adieu to our deceased copy editor, Jayesh S (43). He succumbed to a cardiac arrest on March 22, 2023, 6:00 am IST. Jayesh was hospitalized following a head injury due to an accidental fall.

Introduction

This article narrates why I—an engineer in the prime growing stage of my career—chose to remain with Axelerant, even though having opportunities to join multinational companies that most people aspire for.

The California Children's Hospital Association (CCHA) is a membership organization that champions children's health, well-being and quality of care in California's children's hospitals. Like many non-profit organizations, the team at CCHA is busy and focused on its programs and policy advocacy, so their website must be both an effective communicator and easy to manage and grow. To do that, this project had a few key measures of success: 1. Make the editorial experience much easier 2. Introduce related content between news and programs to allow one step publishing across the site 3. Create a new design that incorporates repeatable graphic components for page creation, thoughtful images and a softer palette of colors and patterns.

In a previous blog post, I explained the list cache tag for entity types, which you use when displaying a list of entities. This cache tag ensures that appropriate render caches and response caches are invalidated whenever a new entity is created, or an existing one is saved. One problem is that the {ENTITY_TYPE}_list cache tag is generic for all entities of that entity type. Invalidating it can cause a lot of cache churn for a large site with heavy activity.

What problem does a bundle-specific list cache tag solve?

Imagine a simplistic site with two content types: "Pages" (page) and "Blog posts" (blog_post.) We will also have the following assumptions: